This is an Air with no DVD drive (and getting that plus DiskWarrior would cost $200 and might not even help).

MOST of my stuff is backed up (the vital stuff) but a lot of non-vital but still wanted stuff is currently not. So just wiping the drive is not an option.

Are there any command-line commands that might help me here? (A little cd-ing around tells me my stuff is OK... as near as I can tell. cd and ls are about the extent of my know-how :p ) Dare I try fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2 which I found on macosxhints? Dangerous?

Can I delete the (4, 888) file?

Can I find out what that file is (so I know to restore it from backup)?

Can I use the command line to clone my (corrupt?) drive to a USB, ethernet or airport volume? (I have all 3.) Or at least clone certain files? (DVR recordings, downloaded games I never checked out yet, etc.)

I hope I don't have to try to extract the HD physically from my Air.

(This happened when attempting to update to iTunes 9 as it happens. Or rather, when that hung, I Safe Booted, ran YASU, and then tried again. The update to 9 went fine that time, but when I rebooted the machine wouldn't start--in Safe mode or otherwise.)

DW would probably fix it. If you can beg, borrow, or steal a current copy on a bootable external drive, I'd do that. I believe cloning would also copy the bad node structure. DU will clone your drive via the Restore option. I wonder if cloning it to a larger drive would cure it.

I'm in the process of moving 250 GB of archived files from an external HD to Time Capsule (dozens of hours?) and then I can reformat it to boot the Air, back up the less vital stuff, and run DW. Better to spend $100 than $200--at least I won't need the DVD drive.

The process will take all weekend. It's like one of those sliding number puzzles with one block free. I have to keep moving the same huge masses of data around, often wirelessly, to have enough room.

As far as I know, the data is recovered. (Carbon Copy Cloner's log shows only a single file that failed to copy--if I read it right. Nothing important.)

However, I lost the $100 gamble on DiskWarrior. The drive cannot be repaired. DW reports physical damage even though the SMART status is OK. Should I trust that?

So the next (expensive) question is: where can I buy a replacement 80 GB HD for a first-gen Air? (I know they're a more obscure kind than later Airs: they use a ZIF connection of some kind.) What kind of drive should I even be searching for? Info is surprisingly scarce. (I found takeapart instructions though.)

I'd even consider an SSD if the cost wasn't much different, but I doubt that.

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